Can You "Name The Last Decade" ? Or Everything You Know is Wrong Including That

Under the light of a blue moon, New Year's Eve '09 sent packing one of the worst decades in human history. Midnight January 1, 2000 was rung in with fears of societal collapse due to the misencoding of years in computer databases, fears whipped into a frenzy by leading intellectuals like Pat Boone. However, Y2K came and went, and the fears waned quickly with a smirk, as we admired our surplus and our bull market. Unfortunately the smirk hung sickly over the remaining decade.

An alcoholic frat boy stole the presidency and our prosperity, then proceeded to date rape our county. His Vice-President was publicly apologized to by his close friend, for having allowed himself to be shot in the face by said VP. When our president spoke to the nation, he made it obvious that he was not only a moron, but a moron on crusade, the most dangerous kind of moron. When the VP spoke to the press, he simply said, "Go fuck yourself"; at least one had too admire his honesty. The leading films about Hitler of the past decade even portrayed Hitler as a sadly misunderstood frail human, an artist. No wonder Bush was believable enough to get reelected.

The twin towers were destroyed under a plan already generally known to and ignored by the government. A plan which ended up well executed by avocational zealot followers of an Eden Ahbez look-a-like. A plan so far fetched that it had already been attempted once by one Samuel Byck, who in 1974 tried to hijack a commercial jet and kill President Richard M. Nixon by crashing it into the White House. This story was revived again by Sondheim in "Assassins", a musical written in the 1990's; it's inclusion in the musical lead to the undoing of its Broadway revival in the wake of 9-11.

Our budget surplus was squandered. Torture and illegal war were falsely promoted as effective military and political strategy. Families died while the poorest sections of New Orleans were nearly destroyed, and all from rain, while the government did nothing. We witnessed entire collapse of the world financial system by corrupt wealthy greedy white men and those they could co-opt or coerce. The health-care system was on the brink of collapse. Infant mortality increased for the first time in two centuries. The advent of huge social networking sites for everyone, even carnival workers, served to underscore our expansive deep sepia-toned wilderness of human loneliness and isolation.

Millions are unemployed or under employed. Shit even I am unemployed. Or under employed examining adults for disabilities who in general are ground down to the ground by the last American decade. Our new president speaks of hope while on every TV screen we endure to the weeping fascism of gold-merchant Glen Beck and his declarations that the first African-American President is a racist. Even the most apparently objective reliable news program wasn't actually a news program at all. It was news satire on Comedy Central. John Stewart became the New Walter Cronkite. Steve Cobert was the New Paul Harvey. Q: The New Edward R. Murrow? A: Janeane Garofalo.

Jesus Christ, I mean how many Lenny Bruces do we need crucified before we acknowledge our sins have already been saved? Not that it matters much, but I think that an African American president is no anomaly at all. Having a President from The University of Chicago is the anomaly. Was it Rudy Vallee who once said, in a Preston Sturge's movie, that 'cultural relevancy isn't just dead, it's decayed"? But I am beginning to digress.

Yesterday, the last day of the last decade, I find a blog written by the husband of an old dear friend. The blog's author is conservative and a young academic in an Israeli University. His blog entry was "The Moral Case for Torturing Terrorists". I immediately thought about the young teacher Irwin from Alan Bennett's brilliant 2004 play 'The History Boys'.

Probably the most important theme to me in that play, which was inexplicably excised from the very good film of the play, was the danger inherent of divorcing intellectual creativity and a contrarian view of history from a moral compass. To lose your compass is a good way to lose your way.

Bennett's play opens with a monologue by Irwin who sits in a wheelchair later explained in the play's post-climax epilogue. He addresses a few unidentified government officials:

'This is the tricky one.

The effect of the bill will be to abolish trial by jury in at least half the cases that currently come before the court and will to a significant extent abolish the presumption of innocence.
Our strategy should therefore be to insist that the bill does not diminish the liberty of the subject but amplifies it; the true liberty of the subject consists of the freedom to walk the streets unmolested etc., etc., secure in the knowledge that if a crime if committed it will be promptly and sufficiently punished and that far from circumscribing the liberty of the subject this will enlarge it.

I would try not to be shrill or earnest. An amused tolerance always comes over best, particularly on television. Paradox works well and mists up the windows which is handy. 'The loss of liberty is the price we pay for freedom' type thing.

School. That's all it is. In my case anyway. Back to school."

Later in the play Irwin encourages his young bright students to find something, anything, in defense of Stalin as an exercise in dissent, or perhaps just mean-spirited cleverness, or justification…a slippery continuum.

There was one thing the last decade taught me. I think it is a variation on the ideas of Karl Popper and Wittgenstein, but it may be a poor meritage made out of their sounder ideas. I am not sure. It remains that there is only one certain fact that all human beings from the beginning of times through our last decade and for humanity's remaining years will have in common. That fact is that some portion of what any individual knows to be absolutely true is not true. It's corollary is most of the sorrow in the world that man creates for himself and for others stems largely from the heterogeneity of views regarding the first point.

Will humans ever become nostalgic for the decade? Are there even any good war songs for any future wistful romantic to remember… 'Who Let The Dogs Out?' over the airwaves of Radio Disney? As Alan Bennett's Irwin put it, 'It's not so much lest we forget as lest we remember…There is no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it'

Surviving this decade seems a real victory somehow. May I be the first to label the now past last decade, a blazon. Maybe it will catch on who knows?

The Pyrrhic 2000's

One more victory like this and we are certainly done for.

Your Humble Servant, RK, January 1, 2010